his question need not be pointed out. It was first
indicated in this magazine in October, 1859. Mr. Collier has seen it,
and, not speaking with certainty as to the use of plumbago pencils at
that period, he says,--"But if it be true that pencils of plumbago were
at that time in common use, as I believe they were, the old corrector
may himself have now and then adopted this mode of recording on the
spot changes which, in his judgment, ought hereafter [thereafter?]
permanently to be made in Shakespeare's text."[cc]

[Footnote cc: _Reply_, p. 20.]

Another volume in the possession of the present writer affords
satisfactory evidence that these pencil-marks may be memorandums made in
the latter half of the century 1600. It is a copy of "The Historie of
the Life and Death of Mary Stuart Queene of Scotland," London, 1636,--a
small, narrow duodecimo, in the original binding. Upon the first one
hundred and sixty-nine pages of this volume, within the ruled margin so
common in old books, are annotations, very brief and sparse, rarely
more than two upon a page, and often not more than one, and consisting
sometimes of only two or three abbreviated words,--all evidently written
in haste, and all entirely without interest. These annotations, or,
rather, memorandums, like those in the Guazzo, explain or illustrate the
text. At the top of the page, within the margin-rules, the annotator has
written the year during which the events there related took place; and
he has also paged the Preface. Now of these annotations _about one half
are in pencil_, the numbering entirely so, with a single exception. This
pencil-writing is manifestly the product of a period within twenty-five
or thirty years of the date of the printing of the book, and yet it
presents apparent variations in style which are especially noteworthy in
connection with our present subject. Some of this pencil-writing is
as clear as if it were freshly written; but the greater part is much
rubbed, apparently by the mere service that the volume has seen; and
some of it is so faint as to be legible only in a high, reflected light,
in which, however, to sharp eyes it becomes distinctly visible.[dd] That
ordinary black pencil-marks will endure on paper for two centuries
may very likely be doubted by many readers, but without reason.
Plumbago-marks, if not removed by rubbing, are even more durable than
ink; because plumbago is an organic, insoluble substance, not subject
to the chemic